Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Introductions to python are easy to find -- but at the end of the day most python tutorials for beginners end up being the same lessons repackaged, often leaving the new programmer with gaping holes in how their newly acquire skills can be applied practically. This is not one of those books. The book begins with the essential skills and concepts necessary to build a solid foundation in not only python, but programming in general. The introduction is thorough, easy to follow, and broken down with enough examples for even the newest of programmers to digest. Those who found Learn Python the Hard Way a little frustrating will like the much more broken down process used in this book. But where this book stands out is the second part where you actially build useful tools you might need to use everyday. The author does a fantastic job of bridging the concepts and skills you learned earlier to real world applications, without skipping many of the important things other tutorials ignore like regex. Whether it's organizing files, working with spreadsheets, or even sending e-mail and text messages, the book introduces programming concepts to the reader through real world applications they can build and use immediately. While programming puzzles and challenges are fun and necessary to an extent, there is little more satisfying to a new engineer than building something that can actually do something useful. One of the biggest hurdles new programmers face is not knowing where to go or what to build after their introductions. Even more so, they do not know necessarily how to apply their new skills. For those more interested in day-to-day applications than building games, this is an amazing place to learn by building with python. I would recommend this for any new programmers, and even those who are interested in exploring what they can build with their foundation.